...Mother Jones:Does accusing United States of war crimes make you sound out of touch with mainstream American sentiment? Wouldn’t most people think that these accusations are coming out of left field?Jeremy Brecher: If the United States is involved in committing war crimes, we as Americans have a responsibility to address that. I don’t think hiding from reality is a solution to the fact that no one likes to be told that they’re doing something wrong.

The second point, though, is that Americans actually are very worried that our country may be doing things that are not in accord with our own values. Appealing to that concern isn’t a matter of trashing our country, but of giving Americans a means of confronting what our government has been doing.

Jill Cutler: People who work at the FBI, Senators, and Congressmen are very concerned about our conduct in the war on terror. The FBI was concerned about the torture that was occurring in various places. Military officials are concerned that the Army’s field manual is not being observedBrendan Smith: The concept of war crimes is actually bringing together some unlikely allies. Paralleling the peace movement, we’re seeing what we could call a “law and order movement.” Here, you have organizations like Amnesty International and the ACLU that are concerned with civil liberties and human rights. But you also have a dozen retired military officials, led by Marine Corps General DavidBrahms, who wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee saying that it should not confirm Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General because he promoted violations of the Geneva Conventions.

JB: The public attitude about war crimes has changed a lot since the beginning of the 1990s. We’ve moved away from a situation where war crimes were just epithets that governments used to bash foreign leaders they didn’t like. Now, we’ve seen tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. We have the International Criminal Court, which, even though the United States is not part of it, is designed for the purpose of trying war crimes. The United States itself has brought either formal charges or accusations of war crimes against other countries’ leaders–including, as we speak, against Saddam Hussein. So this is a concept that we are becoming more familiar with, something that is regarded as part of the fabric of law.Mother Jones: The idea that the U.S. could commit war crimes is taboo, yet on the other hand, it's taken for granted that our country has a special role in the world--that America is an exception. And that exceptionalism gives the U.S. a certain prerogative to act without having to submit to an international litmus test.

JB: This is a claim that’s made by the Bush administration, but when you look at the poll data, it’s quite clear that this belief is not widely shared by the American people. There’s a very interesting set of polls done by an organization called PIPA, the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes. They show that most Americans believe that the United States is bound by international law and by the Geneva Conventions. It’s this fundamental belief in law, including both national and international law, that we’re hoping to appeal to.

While the USA sits "cowed" under the weight of a group of bullies - men and women who will say or do anything for power and control, including selling out their own country.

Let us take back our countries from these thugs, these liars and destroyers of hope and all that is good and decent in life. Corporate America has conspired against its own population and the humanity of the world for one war too many. mr. bush, cheney, rove, (ms) rice, ashcroft, gonzales ...you are under arrest ...for treason, abuse of power, conspiring against the democratic constitution of the United States such that the one document the president is sworn to protect has been destroyed - the constitution. While the integrity of the American presidency is now equated to the likes of Mugabe....

1 Comments:

On an unrelated point, I do like your name. I used to be stealthqueer on a chat room many years ago, after being told once too often that I wasn't a homo because I didn't show up on the speaker's gaydar.

Of course, as a bear, I'm sort of an honorary bulldyke anyway, so I can see how I confused the poor boy... ;)